I created the foundations for this lesson in my PGCE year but have recently updated it for my year 8’s.
It’s quite an engaging activity and my students have taken a lot of the key terminology from it in the past. This version is for higher ability students but it’s pretty easy to differentiate or scaffold.
Activity Set Up
Set the room up into ‘stations’.
Place one ‘station card’ at each station along with dice.
Student’s start at a station and record their location.
They roll the die and look up the corresponding instruction.
Students move to the identified destination.
As they do so they record the transfer process that allowed them to move from one part of the cycle to the next.
After 8-10 minutes students should have moved around a considerable number of the stations to be able to create a systems diagram.
Follow Up
To follow up from the activity I have students each other about their journey around the hydrological cycle, at which point they tend to compare and contrast.
I then select a few students to feedback to the class. Usually they forget to explain why they transferred from one part of the cycle to the next. So I will ask other students to improve upon the answer given when they outline their journey.
New Tasks
This time I’ll be getting my students to create a systems diagram of the stores and flows of water in the cycle. Before doing so students will come up and add to the list either side to enable students to differentiate between stores and flows.Â
Finally my students will be answering a question that I offer them 8 marks for. We will discuss the different between describe and explain and then look at the example given. Students will reflect upon the example to explain why it has only achieve 4 marks and what they would do to improve.
After that students will write their own answer and peer assess what is produced.
If you’d like a copy you can download it here.
Hope you can make use of it.
